Free Write Week 7

For this assignment, I read  "Aggression from the North" on the PBS website, this account was know as the "White Paper". This came about by President Kennedy putting together a group of Vietnamese to travel to South Vietnam in order to get a first hand account of what was truly happening in Vietnam. I chose the same topic for my alternate primary source from Vassar College,  The PBS article starts out the article by saying "South Vietnam is fighting for its life against a brutal campaign of terror and armed attack inspired, directed, supplied, and controlled by the Communist regime in Hanoi" (par.1). The account from Vassar said the  report recommended, "The introduction of large-scale American advisers to help stabilize Diem's government to defeat the CV and crush the NLF[National Liberation Front]" (White Paper). The NLF was created by both Communists and non-Communist forces in an umbrella that only had a few important goals that they were fighting for. Their many idea was to stand in the way of Ngo Dinh Diem. They considered themselves as a third party in the matter, they were independent of the communist party and it was main made up of non-Communist members. The NLF was even praised by main anti-war activists. 

The reason that I give a synopsis of the research I have done is due to the point that I wanted to bring across... CLARITY. That looking back at the relationship of Vietnam and the United States have had is really unclear and doesn't really make sense. The "White Paper" recommends of an all out attack of United States forces in Vietnam, but White house advisers say that the United States  should just pull all forces out of Vietnam completely. President Kennedy did not listen to any of those he decided that the United States will partially send troops into Vietnam. This does not really make any sense once again clarity has come into question. What is the point of only sending in a few troops? Why not send in everything that the United States had so it would have been a quick and decisive victory instead of dragging out a war for eleven years. With the lack of Clarity from the United States and the three different sides on the Vietnamese end, the communist, the non-communist, and the NLF that is not communist but against the non-communist president, brings the situation into a stalemate were everyone just ends up killing everyone else.  I wanted to point this out because an accumulation of battles makes up a war and in "The Things They Carried" several memories of battles and the reason why U.S. troops were over in Vietnam were not clear. 

   In How to Tell a True War Story, Tim O'Brien reiterates over and over how the war looses its  clarity and how everything blends together. One of the best quotes in this chapter is when O'Brien generalizes about what war true is, he says: "War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead" (80). This shows the reader the clarity of war. How can war be all of these things? There is no deeper meaning in war than dumb people that are tired of each other that want to just kill each other instead of talking things out or just leaving things alone.  Later in the chapter, O'Brien later writes about the clarity of war one more time, he says,  "Right spills over into wrong. Order blends into chaos, love into hate, ugliness into beauty, law into anarchy civility into savagery" (82). This shows that if there was clarity, a purpose, a meaning, that it was lost in the bloodshed of young men. 

In conclusion, there is not clarity in war.

"The Vietnam War: An Overview:The Wars for Vietnam 1945 to 1975" Vassar College. 28 Feb 2008

 

Week 7 assigned topic

For this assignment I chose to read the "Vietnam Veterans against the War" article. I found this article to be very interesting and more of an indicator to the truth of what happend in Vietnam than most of the information we are given. Who better to learn about the war from than the people that were actually there and actually lived the experiences. I feel that these are the only people that have the authority and credibility to share with us how the war really went.I found it very intersting that they were willing to admit that maybe what they were doing there was wrong.
"We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American."
I found this video that documented real war veterans and their opinions of the way things really were. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLxQ7oX98iM

War changes people. This fact is realized throughout the book, "The things they carried" but specifically in the story, "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong." When Mark Fossies girlfriend, MaryAnn came into the camp she was sweet, innocent, and in love. But after spending time in the intense settings of the war, her entire persona changed. She seemed to enjoy the urgency of military life and she joined the "Greenies," ambush warriors who were filled with animal instincts. Rat explains that what happened to Mary Anne isn't really that strange: being a woman doesn't make her immune to the way war and the jungle can affect people."The girl joined the zoo . One more animal- end of story" (pg. 107) I found it fascinating jsut how much war can change a person. When MaryAnn first arrived she had a suitcase, cosmetic bag, a pink sweater, and culottes. And after being in the war for only a month or so, she was found wearing a necklace made of human tongues and living like an animal in a zoo among the greenies. If war can do that to a little girly girl, it can change anybody.

My views of war

I was first introduced to war when I was little. I cannot remember an exact first occurrence but I know my parents are the ones who explained what war is and the reasons behind it. I have many friends and relatives in the military so my views on war are very conservative for the most part. For instance the war in Iraq is a very controversial topic and I support the troops 100%. The video I have posted shows exactly how I would respond given the situation within the first couple minutes.


I am definitely not a fan of war and it wouldn't hurt my feelings if it never happened but in this world today it's inevitable. I'm reminded of a quote from a movie that in it's context was not very meaningful but if you apply it to war and the freedom that a country, particularly the United States, states it very well. "No sacrifice, no victory" is from the movie Transformers and I believe that quote applies directly to war. If we did not ever go to war then we could have ended up like the victims of WWII with Hitler attempting to control the world.

Specifically to the Vietnam War I must admit I'm not expert. I only know a few small details of the war which I have attained through movies like Full Metal Jacket and through friends and family. From what I know it appears that the Vietnam war was a great loss of both life and the war itself. One thing I do not like about the United States is that we are always trying to intervene and help everyone else. Now I see how it can be justified because it's not fair for one country or group to bully another, but at some point we should step back and let them duke it out.

What it the Vietnam War

When I think of the Vietnam War, there are a lot of different ideas that come to mind. My first thought is that all soldiers in the Vietnam War had short man disorder. I think of a lot of men trying to impress each other by trying to fulfill the stereotypical machismo persona. For example; in the chapter, The Dentist, O'Brien describes Lemon as man that must try to show how to determine his reputation within the squad, but when the dentist came Lemon remembers on his trauma as a little boy at the dentist and faints. In order to get his macho ego back he decides that he must face the dentist in order to fight his fear of not being considered as a man. O'Brien describes Lemon by saying, "The embarrassment must've turned a screw in his head...There was some pain, no doubt, but in the morning Curt Lemon was all smiles" (O'Brien 88). When O'Brien was writing about must turned a screw in his head, I had the image of Lemon in the back of a tent deciding which fear that he wanted to live with, being afraid of a dentist or being known around the squad as a girl because he fainted. He obviously chose that he would live up to his fear of the dentist to wake up over a fake toothache just to prove that he was not afraid of the dentist. I can not believe that Lemon was so prideful that he had to get a fake pulled just to prove that he was a man. If getting a tooth pulled makes you a man than I was Superman by the age of five.  This scene just reinforces the whole dichotomy of determining of who is a Man and who is a man. 

My second thought about the vietnam war that it was so gruesome that the soldiers turned into cavemen, they either were drug addicts or they were considered sex addicts. This is why I pulled a clip from A Full Metal Jacket in which a Vietnamese hooker was marketing her services to soldiers and the only response that was mustered was "how much".  This shows that these men did not care about the consequences of unprotected sex or didn't really care about love, all these soldiers cared about was getting their mind off of the war. In the novel, O'Brien focuses on Lt. Cross's addiction, it was not drugs but it was sex. He would fade off in a day dream during the war, which eventually got one of the troops killed. He kept saying that he loved her but did he really? I do not think so because he wasn't really day dreaming about her but he was really day dreaming about her knee and kept debating upon whether she was a virgin or not. That doesn't sound like love to me, it sounds like lust. What I found that was really interesting was that Martha was raped, but was it so much in reality or was it in the daydreams of Lt. Cross when he describes tying her down and feeling her knee all night. 

My third thought was how demented these soldiers were before the stepped foot in-country, because these men were trained to be ruthless son of bitches, because in the movie they march around there bed every night holding the guns and praying by saying, " This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master my life. I must shoot straighter than my enemy, who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will. Before God I swear this creed: my rifle and myself are defenders of my country, we are the masters of my enemy, we are the saviors of my life. So be it, until there is no enemy, but peace. Amen. They would pray this every night, this alone would mess up some bodies metal capacity. 

I know my view of the vietnam war is very blurred, but all I have to reference is Platoon and Full Metal Jackets, which are just Hollywood dramatizations.

To be honest, when I first read the assignment my mind went completely blank. I really wasnt sure what my preception of the Vietnam War was; it was always one of those iffy subjects that history teachers tried to skip over or avoid. But I think this perception of uncertainty is normal and a trend found in American society about peoples opionions of the war. The question, " How did the U.S. get involved in the war in the first place, and why did we fight that war?' is a question frequently asked, but seldomly answered in a uniform way. Here's a one-sentence characterization of the relationship between the United States and Vietnam. It was made by President John F. Kennedy in 1962, after the U.S. had already sent some troops to Vietnam, but before full-blown war:

"...As you know, the U.S. for more than a decade has been assisting the government, the people of Vietnam, to maintain their independence."

This statement is misleading. He fails to mention which government we have been supporting, during the Vietnam War era, there was more than one government struggling for control (and the one that had the strongest support among the Vietnamese people wasn't the one the United States was supporting). This is where it becomes clear of why there is so much confussion revolving around the war. Nobody really knew which side was the enemy. I feel that the depiciton engraved into Americans about the war was greatly influenced by media control. We know what the media wanted us to know, and the problem with this is that information can be miscontrued and stretched to the point where it is no longer fact and therefor becomes misleading. I think Tim O' Brian illustrates this uncertainty very well:

"I was drafted to fight a war I hated...Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons...The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty...Was it a Civil War? A war of national libertation or simple agression? Who started it, and when, and why?" (The things they carried pg 40)

This Quote sums up my view of the war. Im really not sure what to think about it because there is just so much uncertainty revolving around it and so much that we dont know. I found this video that represents the how the media shaped our views and led us to believe what they wanted us to believe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqayiS3NnuY ( I couldnt get the video to upload?!)

My perception of war

I learned about war from a few sources. First family and friends. Both of my grandfathers were in the military as well and countless aunts and uncles. I have two friends overseas as I type this, but my most direct of them is my boyfriends father who fought in Vietnam. I have learned much from what they do and do not share. The only thing they talk about is how proud they are to have served. Their silence about the actual events that took place reinforce the idea that they have experianced and seen things worse than I can possibly imagine. In spite of those experiances the pride in their country and what they fought for shine through.
What I have come away with is that war is awful. Things happen in war that do not happen in everyday life, but that is part of it. War is ruthless and harsh and can bring out the deamons within us. But there is a purpose for war. Freedom is not free. Not everyone in america will sacrifice so some men and women are brave enough to sacrifice everything. Not necissarily because we are fighting because of the right reasons but because they have faith in our country and what it stands for. They have faith and loyalty to their friends family and and very contorversial government.
When i think of war vietnam in particular this is exactly what floats through my mind. The song, the images every thing to a tee!

My second source is a play I performed in high school called A Piece of My Heart. It was about the womans role in the war and it only reinforced the feelings I already had but made me extremely aware of the after effects of war. I learned through this play what is may have been like to come home after war. How everthing can be so different yet the same. There is controversy and termoil but more than anything pride and faith in war. Pride and gratfulness for the bravery and sacrifices .
Here is a website that represents that play.
http://www.offoffoff.com/theater/2001/pieceofmyheart.php3